Arinex and Adelaide Convention Centre each took home three categories, while ICC Sydney and Hannover Fairs won two.
Adelaide Convention Centre won Best Consumer Show for Cellar Door Fest 2024 and the climate and environment sustainability award for minimising waste to landfill. Their sustainability win was also recognised as the best out of the six awards in the innovation and creativity, sustainability and marketing categories.
Arinex won Best Incentive Event for their management of the Paramount Pools Passport to Paradise incentive for JNR Incorporated, Best Organiser and Best Team, with the latter marking out Arinex as the best out of the winners in the three team categories.
Meanwhile ICC Sydney nabbed both the social and cultural sustainability award for their RESPECT initiative and the award for Best Venue Team.
And Hannover Fairs event AFAC24 powered by INTERSCHUTZ won both Best Trade Show and was named the top overall event, as the best of the winners across the four event categories.
There were two categories where the result was too close to determine a single outright winner and a further two categories where the winner and the highly commended entrant were separated by less than a point.
In the most popular category of the night, the Service or Supplier Team of the Year, which had 16 submissions, marketing and communication was the flavour of the two winners, with Zadro and Half Eaten Donut sharing the accolade.
And again, in the Most Outstanding Marketing Campaign category, there were also two winners, with Gold Coast Convention and Exhibition Centre winning for their “It Takes a Team – Join Ours” recruitment campaign, alongside RX Global’s work on All Energy Australia.
In the environmental and climate sustainability category, Adelaide Convention Centre won by a third of a point over Sydney Showground’s Climate Conscious Events initiative, which was commended.
And in the Best Venue category, half a point separated the winner, Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre, from the commended runner-up ICC Sydney.
The remaining winners of the night were Brisbane Convention & Exhibition Centre for Best Conference for the 12th International AIDS Society Conference on HIV Science (IAS 2023), Designteam in Best Stand, Show Feature or Event Build for their work with BAE Systems at Land Forces 2024, Jomablue’s Event Check-in and Smart Badgge in Best Technology Innovation and Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary’s new venue The Homestead in Best New Product or Service.
There were also a couple of individual award recipients, with Elle Reinehr from MCG Events taking out the Future Leader award, while former general manager of Perth Convention Exhibition Centre and now exhibition company owner, Nigel Keen, was recognised for his contribution to the industry and the recently retired CEO of ICC Sydney, Geoff Donaghy, was given a Lifetime Achievement Award.
The awards were organised by new industry association, the Australian Business Events Association (ABEA), and took place at the midway point of ABEA’s first national conference at ICC Sydney.
